Development of a crack opening displacement assessment procedure considering change of compliance at a crack part in thin wall pipes made of modified 9Cr-1Mo steel

Wakai, Takashi ; Machida, Hideo*; Arakawa, Manabu*; Yoshida, Shinji*; Yanagihara, Seiji*; Suzuki, Ryosuke*; Matsubara, Masaaki*; Enuma, Yasuhiro*

This paper describes a crack opening displacement (COD) assessment procedure used in Leak-Before-Break (LBB) assessment of sodium pipes of the Japan Sodium cooled Fast Reactor (JSFR). The sodium pipes are made of ASME Gr.91 (modified 9Cr-1Mo steel). Thickness of the pipes is small, because the internal pressure is very low. Modified 9Cr-1Mo steel has a relatively large yield stress and small work hardening coefficient comparing to the austenitic stainless steels which are currently used in the conventional plants. For LBB assessment, the coolant leak rate from a through wall crack must be estimated properly. Since the leak rate is strongly related to the crack opening displacement (COD), an appropriate COD assessment method must be established to perform LBB assessment. However, COD assessment method applicable for JSFR sodium pipes - thin wall and small work hardening material - has not been proposed yet. Taking non-linearity of the material and the geometry of JSFR pipes, a series of finite element analyses (FEA) for the pipe containing a circumferential through-wall crack was conducted. Based on the parametric FEA results, engineering formulae for COD evaluation were established. Analytical results were compared to some experimental results. The calculated COD was in a good agreement with the observations.